


if you are not too long

by MontanaHarper



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Author's Favorite, Episode: s01e10 The Moment of Truth, Feels, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-08
Updated: 2009-04-08
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:28:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MontanaHarper/pseuds/MontanaHarper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>"He loved you a great deal."</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	if you are not too long

**Author's Note:**

> Coda to 1x10 – "The Moment of Truth", including spoilers. Title taken from Oscar Wilde's _The Importance of Being Earnest_: "If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life."
> 
> Thanks to Casspeach for her encouragement and inspiration, not to mention her leet Brit-picking and beta skills.

They sit side by side on the battlement, the silence as comfortable as the light breeze.

Finally Arthur plucks up the courage to say, "He loved you a great deal."

Merlin doesn't pretend to misunderstand. "He never said outright, but looking back I think he must've done." He tilts his head, slants a look at Arthur. "How did you know?"

Arthur doesn't answer at once, half wishing he'd never said anything at all and yet knowing that sooner or later it would've had to come to this.

Eventually, he says, "He lied to protect you." He watches Merlin's eyes widen in the instant before Merlin turns his face away, and Arthur knows he's right. For the first time in his life, he would rather not be. "That's what you were trying to tell me, in Ealdor, before Morgana interrupted, isn't it? That you're a sorcerer?"

The silence drags on for so long that Arthur thinks he's not going to get an answer at all. Then: "Yes." The word is quiet, so quiet Arthur could pretend not to have heard.

Merlin's fingers are worrying at the cuffs of his coat, and Arthur has the sudden urge to take Merlin's hands in his own, to still their restlessness with kisses pressed against callused fingertips and sturdy palms.

"I had thought –" He has to stop, has to look away, and so he squints against the brightness of the sky, focuses on the flutter of a banner and the wheel of a falcon in the distance. "At the time, I thought, I _hoped_ perhaps you were trying to tell me something else."

The admission, while enough to draw Merlin's attention back to him – Arthur can feel the weight of that gaze, familiar and inappropriate and oddly welcome – is not enough to balance the scales. A secret for a secret; Arthur can offer no less.

"I would lie to protect you, as well."

For a moment there's an unnatural stillness, as if the world around them were holding its breath, and then Merlin shifts and a cool hand covers Arthur's where it rests against the sun-warmed stone of Camelot.

It's enough.


End file.
